Year 31
by SongsofPsyche1945
Summary: The 31st hunger games. Just my take on what the other games would have looked like, it follows a tribute named Lucy from the 10th district.


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Lucy Gale of District 10 knew she wasn't the only one to notice how the ground glistened as the capitol's tube brought her into the Arena. She was one of the lucky to pause before running towards the cornucopia..

Eight of the twenty-four tributes bolted towards the cornucopia without noticing the sand trap.

She watched in terror as the desert was upon the tributes with lighting speed.

Eugene, district 9's male tribute fell flat on his back in the sinking sand. He was kicking like a hog with its throat cut and every kick his body sank deeper. As his face disappeared beneath the mud he glimpsed Lucy, standing stock still on her platform.

Then the mire covered his face and blotted him out.

Feeble cries for assistance ended with choking silence as mouths were filled with desert. Some swam against the ground in a hysterical attempt to stay afloat, but the sand reached swiftly to snatch every last of them. Lucy watched in silence as Eleanor Kooker, the female from District 6 wasn't to be let free; she struggled, cursing and pressing the thrashing body of a another tribute into the sand in her frantic attempts to step out of the gully.

There were universal howls now, as the eight panicking tributes groped and grasped at each other for support, desperately trying to keep their heads afloat in the sea of sand.

Lucy couldn't move herself from the sight. She watched in strange calmness as the mud claimed her competitors and she couldn't help but feel smug at the thought that she had outwitted the capital's first trap.

Davidson, the boy from her own district was buried up to his waist. She watched him struggle without an ounce of sympathy. A few yards behind him another boy was screaming blue murder as the desert ate him up. Further still from him Lucy could see a face peering out from the seething ground like a living mask thrown on the earth. There was an arm close by, still waving as it sank.

Lucy looked behind her and lept the small distance from her platform to the edge of the safe ground. She took another step backwards as the mud slightly overran the lip of the gully., but it didn't reach her feet. Nor, curiously did it dissipate itself as water wave might have done. This wasn't normal quicksand; this was an altered death trap, cleverly man made in the capital's labs. It was meant to kill.

Like concrete, the sand hardened, fixing its living trophies like flies in amber. From the lips of every face that still took air came a fresh cry of terror as they felt the desert floor stiffen around their struggling limbs.

Lucy found that she couldn't pull her eyes away from the trapped tributes, so still she stared. Her eye's laid on Eleanor Kooker, buried to breast level. Tears were pouring down her cheeks; she was sobbing like a little girl. The tributes who's faces were buried but whose limbs, or parts of bodies still broke surface were dead of asphyxiation by now. Only Eleanor Kooker, Davidson and two other tributes survived of the eight that had fallen into the trap. Of the fifteen other tributes, Lucy did not know of their fate.

Her eyes fell on one poor soul who was locked in the earth up to his chin. Eleanor was buried so that her breasts sat on the ground, her arms were free to beat uselessly at the ground that held her fast. Davidson was held from his hips down, and most horribly, one pathetic victim was seen only by his nose and mouth. His head tipped back into the ground, blinded by rock. Still he breathed. Still he screamed.

Eleanor Kooker was scrabbling at the ground with torn nails, but this was not loose sand. It was unmovable.

"Help me" she demanded of Lucy, hands bleeding as she reached towards her.

The two women stared at each other.

"Jesus god!" screamed the mouth.

The head was silent; by his glazed look it was apparent that he had lost his mind.

"Please help us…" pleaded Davidson's torso, "Please…."

Lucy just stared.

"Come on!" demanded Eleanor Kooker, "Please…"

Numbly, Lucy turned away from the fallen tributes. Already there was a glimmer of dawn in the east. The air would soon be blistering. She dare not place a foot in the gully, for the sand may consume her too. She took a few steps back, eyes never leaving Eleanor's face as she eased herself away from the pit and stepped into the Arena's lush landscape.

Soon it would be noon. The woman, the Torso, the Head and the Mouth only had hours before they perished. By that time the wilderness would have had the best of them. The sun would have boiled their brain-pans dry, snakes would have nested in their hairs, the buzzards would have hooked our their helpless eyes.

She glances round one more at their trivial forms, dwarfed by the bloody sweep of the dawn sky.

Already she was hearing the cannons being fired. Five dead now, three more doomed to die. She didn't care if the capital's camera's were watching. She didn't care if this was only their little dots and commas of human pain on a blank sheet of sand.

Eight down, sixteen more to go.

After a while, she turned and began to run.

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I've had this in my head for a REALLY long time, so I finally typed it out.

It's inspired by Skins of Our Father by Clive Barker

Please read and review!


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